


Tight Spaces (and Handsome Faces)

by dust_and_gold



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 16:00:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2856749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dust_and_gold/pseuds/dust_and_gold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke Griffin, a premed junior, gets stuck in an elevator with her least favorite fellow student council member, Bellamy Blake, on the way to dropping off her final paper before winter break. Tensions (mostly sexual) ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tight Spaces (and Handsome Faces)

Clarke is five minutes away from freedom.

The final paper for her Organic Chemistry class—the hardest class she’s ever taken, and Clarke is a girl who has defined her life by the difficulty of her classes—is due at 4:00 on the dot. It’s 3:55. She’s five minutes and one elevator ride away from the end of the semester and the glorious beginning of winter break.

She meant to head to Dr. Kane’s office much earlier, of course. Clarke hates being late and she hates stressing out and she hates, _hates_ , leaving things to chance. Give yourself only five minutes to get there, and it’s bound to take ten.

But Clarke is on top of it. Sure, she may have decided at 3:07 to give her twenty page paper a last minute (twelfth) read-through. Sure, it would have been more convenient if Jasper hadn’t chosen that _precise_ moment to bang into her dorm room and ask her if the chemical compound he was planning to illegally synthesize that evening with Monty would actually lead to a euphoric high, as intended, or permanent blindness. (Clarke lied and told them it would render them impotent, mostly to get him to leave and partially because the look of horror on his face was the funniest thing she’d ever seen.)

But still. Clarke will make it to Professor Kane’s office on time. She practically ran across campus to the Jaha Hall of Science and Mathematics, the tallest and oldest building at Ark University, but Clarke has made it. Out of breath, and with a few blond curls attempting to escape her half-princess twists, but so what? She isn’t frazzled. She _isn’t._ Clarke hates being frazzled, and she hates panicking. So she simply doesn’t do it.

As she waits for the elevator, she glances down at the neatly stapled stack of papers in her grip, and her heart zips into overdrive. (God, she has to get an A on this paper. She just _has_ to.)

There’s a _ding_ as the elevator doors open. Without looking up, she strides purposefully inside, fast and businesslike and with the heels of her boots rapping sharply on the linoleum. She slams into something. No, a someone. A tall, warm, and disconcertingly solid someone.

(She hates that she already knows who it is.)

A hand shoots out to steady her. “In a hurry, Princess?”

Clarke’s head jerks up. That fast, frazzled, panicky feeling zips at her heart again—that out-of-control, can’t-explain _something_ she can’t stand. Of all the luck, to be in an elevator with Bellamy Blake, he of the sideways smirk and tousled curls. It’s not that she hates him. (Well, not anymore.) It’s that they’re so different she constantly feels off balance around him. And Clarke is a person very fond of solid ground.

The elevator groans to life and rises, sending her stumbling again. It’s an old building, so old she swears there’s a dude in the basement who cranks the gears of this rickety old elevator by hand. She seizes the wall rather than let Bellamy touch her again. Besides, she’s used to holding herself up.

“Yes, actually, I am.” Her voice comes out prim and precise in a way she sort of hates. “I’ve got a paper to turn in.”

“Ah.” Bellamy looks amused for no reason she can fathom. One corner of his mouth curls up, and he crosses his arms, casual and purposeful and a hundred things at once. (His leather sleeves tighten distractingly around his biceps. Clarke is _not_ looking. She’s not.) “No wonder you have that look on your face.”

“What look?”

“That stressed out look.” His voice is deep and resonant, filling every corner of the elevator. “It’s the one you get in every Council meeting when Collins suggests something stupid.”

She scowls. He should know better than to bring up her useless ex-boyfriend. “I am not stressed.”

“Of course you’re not.”

(She glances at her cell phone. Four minutes. Swimming in time. _Not stressed._ )

With a metallic screech, the elevator slams to a halt.

For a long moment, Bellamy and Clarke are frozen. Clarke waits with her heart in her throat, just to make sure that her senses aren’t lying to her. That that did, indeed, just happen.

“Stressed now, princess?”

“NO.” Clarke presses her palms to the metal doors, but they’re still and silent. No hum of electricity. No nothing. “No, no, _no_.”

Bellamy jabs the emergency button. An alarm shrills, but as Bellamy presses “call for help”, nothing happens.

“This can’t happen.” Clarke lunges in front of him, squeezing herself into the small space between Bellamy and the square of buttons. “No, we’re getting out of here _right now._ ”

She jabs the alarm, the call, the alarm, the call, over and over.

(Two minutes. It’s going to be fine. She’s going to make it.)

“Clarke.”

“Can’t you get us out of here?!”

“ _Hey_.” Bellamy drags her back to the middle of the elevator by the elbow, and she hates how small this place is, that she can feel the heat of him in every corner. That she’d have to flatten herself to the wall to keep from touching him.

No. She has to get out. She will go utterly, truly mental if she has to stay in this infernal skybox with Bellamy Blake.

“You know we’re gonna be fine, right?” Bellamy says, though the way he swallows (the knob in his throat dips and it’s _very distracting_ ) seems to Clarke to be a tell. She doesn’t know _what_ it’s telling. That’s he’s afraid, nervous, worried, freaked out—it could be anything with Bellamy. Some days, when they’re leading the underclassman Council together as student body-appointed co-leaders, she feels like she knows him through and through. And then other times… other times, there is no one more infuriatingly mysterious than Bellamy Blake.

(One minute. She’s officially frazzled.)

“It’s not that,” she says. “It’s my paper. It’s due in…” She moans as the clock on her phone turns 4:00. “Now.”

“Yeah, but this is a pretty good excuse, right? Your professor can’t fault you for the elevator stopping.”

“Professor _Kane?_ Have you ever had a class with him? He faults you for _breathing_ out of turn. If I show up there two minutes late and tell him the elevator got stuck, he’ll lecture me for not having the foresight to take the stairs, or for not coming earlier in the day, or for not fixing the elevator myself with nothing but the contents of my book bag.”

“What are the contents of your book bag?”

She shoots him a withering glare.

“We could be here for hours. We may need supplies,” he says, very seriously. “Or at least snacks.”

“No, we won’t, because we’re getting out of here.” Clarke hits the call button and nearly cries when a voice crackles through.

“ _Hello?_ ”

“Hi!” Clarke nearly laughs in relief, and Bellamy releases his breath. “We’re trapped in the elevator in Jaha Hall. Do you know what’s going on? Can you get us out?”

“ _We’re aware of the situation, and rescue personnel are on route. Seems to be a simple mechanical problem. No need to worry, but you should be out of there in twenty to thirty minutes. Hang in tight. We promise we’re doing all we can_.”

“Did… she just say twenty to thirty minutes?” Clarke says in horror.

Bellamy swears and yanks his phone out of his back pocket. ( _Do not look at his butt, Clarke_.) She assumes he’s texting his sister Octavia, because he only gets that look on his face when O is involved, sort of frowning and smiling all at once, all knitted brow and soft eyes. (It’s not cute. _It’s not._ )

She grips the paper in her hand more tightly, trying to breathe and remember that the ground is not going to fall away beneath her. (At least, she hopes.) Bellamy sinks to the floor with a sighs and leans his head back against the wall. She fights not to stare at the long, exposed line of his throat.

Clarke raises her brows at him.

He shrugs. “Might as well get comfortable.” She lets out a scoffing sound, and he shakes his head. “There’s no point, Clarke. You won’t make it out in time.”

She’s always liked the way he says her name. It took him ages to work up to it. At first, she was just _princess_ , and it certainly hadn’t started out as a fond nickname. When they were first thrust on the student council together, they were like oil and water. No, vinegar and baking soda. So opposite, so combustible, so very much in constant disagreement about… everything.

He was this cocky, heartless scholarship boy with a chip on his shoulder and everything to prove. She was quiet and serious and grieving for her dad. She spoke and walked and stood like a rich girl whose mother was on the board of the school. He postured and glowered like a boy who’d been burned by everything she was.

It was no wonder they couldn’t stand the sight of each other.

But then they realized that they did have one thing in common, and it was the only thing that matted: the students. Underneath, they both wanted to lead them in the best way they could. And somehow, they learned how, and she became Clarke rather than “Princess”. And he stopped being “Octavia’s asshole brother” and just became Bellamy. (Well, sometimes, when she was drunk, he was “Fucking Bellamy fucking Blake that fucking fucker”. But only sometimes.)

Whenever he says her name, she feels like it means something more than when other people say it. Because he’s made the choice to. Like it’s not what she’s called, but who she is.

Clarke sags down to the elevator floor in defeat. She presses her back to the wall opposite, as far from Bellamy as she can get, yet still they have to alternate legs to keep their shoes from knocking. Even in her sturdy boots, her feet look tiny compared to his. Everything about him looks large and rangy. Her eyes follow the line of his black jeans and the width of his shoulders.

She buries her head in her hands. “I really needed that A.”

“You’re going to get an A,” he says. “You’re Clarke Griffin. You can get A’s in your sleep. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever had the misfortune to lead a student council with.”

She smiles almost against her will. “I’m the only person you’ve ever lead a student council with.”

“Well, I wouldn’t do it with anyone but you.”

There’s an undercurrent in his deep voice that touches on something she’s too afraid to look at head on. She stares at her knees. “Be that as it may, I will fail if I don’t turn in that paper.”

“You will.”

“Yeah, but by the time I do, it may be too late!” she snaps.

“Chill, princess.”

“No, I will not chill. You may be content to just…fly by the seat of your pants, or whatever, but some of us _care_ about grades and getting into medical school and not making the kind of hideous mistakes our parents made!”

His jaw clenches. “You have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about, princess.”

Why does it always get like this with him? One moment she’s… and the next…It makes her twice as furious, somehow, like if she can just blame Bellamy Blake for every problem in her life, she may overcome them. “Really nice, Bellamy. So classy.”

“ _Classy?_ ” he echoes, like he’s never heard the word before.  “Are you for real, Clarke? Do you ever loosen up?”

“I am loose,” she grits through teeth so tightly clenched the words come out distorted.

He barks a laugh. “What’s that line from _Ferris Bueller?_ Something about asses and coals turning into diamonds?”

“This is going to be such a fun twenty minutes.”

“I’m serious. You’re so tightly wound, and you don’t even realize it. Like you’ve got to be in control of fucking _everything_. Just let it the fuck go! So you fail one class. Who _cares?_ ”

“ _I care!_ ” Her hands ball into fists, and she seriously considers leaning across the tiny space and punching his (bronze, sculpted, freckled, _oh fucking god_ ) face.

“Why?”

“Because if I don’t, who will?!”

The admission shocks them both into silence. Clarke’s heart is spinning way too quickly, and god, if she could just calm down, just get it under control, but she feels like she’s coming unraveled.

“Clarke,” Bellamy says, in that deep _I’m saying your name_ way that turns her joins to water, but she talks right over him. How dare he. Just… how dare he.

“You think I should be more like you, Bellamy Blake? You can’t just do whatever the hell you want! Life doesn’t work that way!”

“Again. No idea what the _fuck_ you’re talking about, princess.”

“ _Stop calling me that!_ ”

He laughs bitterly. “Why not? It’s what you are. Spoiled, shiny princess in her tower. Thinks the world is all about money and grades. It’s a lot fucking harder than that.”

Clarke gets to her feet, frightened by how much she’s trembling and so furious she might punch a hole in the elevator door. “I am getting the hell out of here.”

“Awesome, I had no idea you were a fucking _wizard_.” His eyes narrow. “Who are you texting?”

“Raven,” she growls. “If she can get back to campus and engineer me some kind of miracle rocket ship—or literally _any way_ to get out of this room—I will canonize her.” And then something clicks in her head, and she rounds on him with renewed fury. “Raven Reyes, my best friend? Remember her? Might be hard, with that huge roster of coeds you’ve slept with.”

“ _Don’t_.” He shoots to his feet, towering over her, and jabs a finger at her chest. “You fucking _start_.”

“Why not?” She tips her chin and meets his gaze square, her pulse thrumming. “I’m doing exactly what you wanted, aren’t I? I’m being—what was the term?— _loose._ This isn’t a Council meeting. I don’t have to be responsible or a leader or _in control_. Hell, I could be failing out of school right now! So _why not, Bellamy?_ ”

He’s breathing hard, his chest rising and falling. She’s so close she swears she can feel his heart going mad, can feel the burn of his anger on her skin. “I don’t understand you.”

Clarke doesn’t understand herself. She doesn’t know why she feels like crying, or why she can’t calm down, or why she feels like there’s so much inside her and her skin’s too tight and all the ragged pieces inside of her will come bursting out any second. And she sure as hell doesn’t know why she longs to press her thumb to the dip in his chin, to discover each freckle with the tip of her finger.

“I don’t either,” she whispers.

It’s so silent, and they’re so close. All she can hear is the rhythm of their matching heavy breaths, and she swears—oh, God—that his eyes drop to her lips and—

They’re plunged into darkness.

 

* * *

 

Every light in the elevator has died.

Bellamy and Clarke ricochet away from each other as terror jolts through Clarke’s entire body and Bellamy lets out a forceful “ _Fuck!_ ”

They wait in dead, frozen silence.

“Are…” Clarke swallows. “We’re not falling to our deaths.”

“No,” Bellamy says, “we’re not.”

“Do you think we will?”

More silence. He’s nothing but a shape in the darkness, but the longer she stares at him, the more details come to light. Black curls. Those shoulders. ( _Okay, no more looking._ )

“I think we’re good,” Bellamy says.

He means their chances of plummeting to the ground, of course, but Clarke looks at the floor. (Or at least, where she assumes the floor is. She can’t even see her toes.) She doesn’t know what to say, how to undo the anger that still hangs like a cloud in the room. (She doesn’t know what to do with that mad urge to _touch his dimple_ , either. What the hell was that?)

Clarke hugs herself and lets the silence stretch wider.

Suddenly, light blossoms in the room. Bellamy swipes a thumb across his phone as a red-and-gold light flickers and dances off the screen.

“Campfire app,” he says, holding it up so she can see that there is, indeed, an image of a real-life campfire. He sits back down and places the “fire” in the very heart of the elevator, directly between them like a peace offering.

She takes it.

Clarke folds herself onto the ground, though this time her keeps her legs tightly crossed.

Bellamy sighs. “Look, Clarke, I really hate fighting with you.”

She cracks a smile. “Too much like sophomore year, yeah?”

He laughs unsteadily, and the ragged edges of it set her heart beating fast. “Way too fucking much. I’ll admit, part of me misses going toe to toe with you over _every_ single fucking Council decision. But it’s only a small part.”

“What I said about you doing whatever the hell you want, not caring about things…I know you’re not that guy anymore. I’m sorry.”

He blinks fast, almost looking startled. She watches him swallow in the firelight. “I’m not saying I wasn’t a dick back then. But I…” There’s a certain vulnerability in his dark eyes all of a sudden, and if she didn’t know Bellamy any better, she’d swear he was nervous. Shy. “Do you believe in second chances?”

“Yes,” she says quietly.

“I didn’t, Clarke. Not until I got voted onto the Council. Jesus, I put my name up for consideration on a goddamn _whim_. I thought it would be a fucking laugh to be in charge of a bunch of drunk ass college students. I’d finally gotten the hell out of the shithole neighborhood O and I’d been stuck in, and I… well, I did whatever the hell I wanted.”

“I remember,” she says drily.

He shakes his head, his mess of curls bouncing slightly. “Yeah, but then I realized what the Council was. Or what it could be if it had people who gave half a shit. And then O came to school here, and I realized I wanted to…” He trails off.

In spite of herself, Clarke leans closer to the fire. “What?”

“It’s gonna sound so fucking stupid.”

“No, it won’t,” she says. “And you say ‘fuck’ too much.”

This surprises a laugh out of him, a full-throated laugh that makes him tip his head back. “No such thing, princess.”

She bites back a smile. “You were saying?”

“Right. Well…I guess I realized I wanted to take a page out of your book, princess.”

She goes utterly still. “What?”

“You hated me. I get that. I was fucking hateable. Hell, I hated _myself_. And you were—well, I thought you were stuck-up as holy fuck, but then somewhere along the way I found I wanted to be the kind of leader you would respect,” he says, all in a rush. “Fuck, it’s dumb. It’s fucking creepy sounding, is what it is, but there you go. I just want you to know you’re not the only person that cares. You’re not the only one who wants to save the world almost every second of every day, Clarke.”

Slowly, carefully, she straightens her legs, making sure not to touch him. “You never told me that.”

He shrugs, gaze down, like he’s not accustomed to talking that much. Which, she realizes, he isn’t.

“You’re right about me,” she says. “I do need to loosen up a bit.” At the look on his face, she laughs. “Okay, a lot.”

“Do you want to go to med school?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Okay then.” He shrugs. “You will.”

The way he says it, with complete faith, so straight and sure, sets her heart on fire.

“And one late paper,” he says, one eyebrow quirked, “isn’t going to get in the way of that. You’re Clarke Griffin. If Kane doesn’t accept the late paper? Fucking _make_ him. The Clarke Griffin I know doesn’t let anything go without a fight.”

Warmth spreads through her chest, and something bright and bubbly is in her veins. Unconsciously, she inches closer until she’s no longer touching the wall behind her. “I couldn’t even let an elevator ride go by without a fight.”

He laughs. Has she ever heard him laugh this much in such a short amount of time? “Fighting keeps you young and fit.”

She runs her eyes up the length of his body. “Obviously,” she says, without thinking.

“Are you… saying I’m fit?” It’s hard to make out his expression in the half-dark, but she can hear the smile in his words. And she doesn’t need to see him to know that one side of his mouth has curled up high than the other, or that his head has tipped to one side and his eyes are like pools of ink.

“I—” She looks away, flustered. “If you ran a mile, you probably wouldn’t drop dead, is what I’m saying.”

“That’s true,” he says, deadpan. “I do have great lung capacity.”

His ankle grazes hers.

Sparks travel up her leg, through her bones and across her skin. It’s like he’s made of lightning.

( _Oh, dear God. He’s… tell me he’s not saying what I think he’s saying_.)

Their gazes catch in the darkness and burn, burn until she’s nothing but a campfire herself. She’s so scared of this. It’s like being in an elevator in free fall. It’s cutting your own bonds, snipping the steel elevator cables and just trusting that the other person won’t let you smash to smithereens on the cold hard earth. And god, she may want to punch him (in the mouth) (with her own mouth), but if there’s one person on this savage earth that Clarke Griffin trusts, it’s fucking Bellamy fucking Blake, that fucking fucker.

_Her_ fucking fucker. (She feels her cheeks redden just thinking that.)

“Should we test it out?” she says, her quiet voice splitting the darkness apart.

“Test out what?” His voice is hoarse.

A grin starts slow on her face and then blossoms so wide she feels like her cheeks will split. “Your lung capacity.”

The sound he lets out is somewhere between a laugh and a gasp. She scoots closer along the elevator floor until she’s between his legs, her hands running up his shins to his knees, and she hears his breaths tangle in his throat. Bellamy’s hands reach out and take gentle hold of her hips. The firelight app goes dark.

She wants to know what his skin tastes like.

“Clarke,” he says, almost in warning.

She finds his curls in the darkness and tugs his lips down to hers.

Neither of them moves for a long, unbroken moment. And then there’s a rush of movement as his arms wrap around her, and my God are they just as strong as she always thought. Her fingers discover the secret skin at the nape of his neck, and his palm runs down her spine to the small of her back and the span of her hip. Clarke feels like she didn’t even have hips until Bellamy’s hands discovered them. Like before this second she hadn’t even known what hips, hands, and lips were even _for_.

Lips, Clarke realizes, are for kissing Bellamy Blake. On the lips. On the throat. Below his ear. On his dimple. Evolution created lips just for kissing Bellamy Blake.

“Did you just kiss my _dimple?_ ”

“Stop talking,” she says.

In answer, his hand slips beneath her shirt and around her back, and she forgets how to breathe. She curls closer to him, pressing him into the elevator walls. She’s glad it’s pitch dark, and that she can learn to see him with just her hands.

“This is a big fucking mistake,” he murmurs into her hair.

She whispers, “Who cares?” into his lips, and he laughs and she feels his breath on the dip of her collarbone as he asks, “Who are you and what the fuck have you done to Clarke Griffin?” and she takes complete hold of his face. She pulls herself into his lap and wraps her legs around his waist until she’s flush with him. Until their stomachs and heaving chests and too-full hearts line up. And she says, raggedly, “You say fuck too fucking much,” and then neither of them speaks for a long, long time.

And they don’t stop kissing, either. They don’t notice when the lights crackle back on, when their phones buzz, or when the voice speaks over the intercom. They only come apart when the elevator doors do, and they stay apart only as long as it takes for Clarke to force Kane to accept her paper and for them to reach Bellamy’s apartment.

She kisses him the moment they cross the threshold, and she keeps kissing him even when he makes a joke about how “loose” she suddenly is (So long as he doesn’t make any “tight” jokes.). She’s glad, this time, for the bright afternoon light turning his bare chest to bronze and outlining every damn freckle on his cheeks. She’s glad she can see the exact way he looks at her, drinks her in, as they sink together onto his bed.

And she’s glad, for once, to finally just fucking _fall._

 


End file.
